Abstract
Movies piracy has raised growing concerns in digital time. However, most studies on movie piracy focused on university students, paying less attention to the exploration of the comprehensive factors among online users, especially in Chinese context. To narrow these gaps, the current study aimed at investigating the attitudes of Chinese online users towards movie piracy and examined the factors that influence the attitudes. Taking a piracy case of a Chinese movie “The Wandering Earth” as an example, we collected 735 comments from two Sina Weibo posts through web crawling. Through a content analysis based on social cognitive theory (SCT), we found that the attitudes of online users ranged from supporting, opposing pessimistically to opposing movie piracy. We also found out outcome expectancies, self-control, social learning, moral disengagement and environmental factors contributed to these attitudes. The factors of users’ attitudes were consistent with the explanation on piracy behavior of SCT and contributed to enriching SCT in Chinese context. This research provided a better understanding of movie piracy among online users with qualitative insights and had some implications.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Al-Rafee, S., Cronan, T.P.: Digital piracy: factors that influence attitude toward behavior. J. Bus. Ethics 63(3), 237–259 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-005-1902-9
Peitz, M., Waelbroeck, P.: Piracy of digital products: a critical review of the theoretical literature. Inf. Econ. Policy 18(4), 449–476 (2006)
Lowry, P.B., Zhang, J., Wu, T.: Nature or nurture? A meta-analysis of the factors that maximize the prediction of digital piracy by using social cognitive theory as a framework. Comput. Hum. Behav. 68, 104–120 (2017)
Rob, R., Waldfogel, J.: Piracy on the silver screen. J. Ind. Econ. 55(3), 379–395 (2007)
Al-Rafee, S., Dashti, A.E.: A cross cultural comparison of the extended TPB: the case of digital piracy. J. Glob. Inf. Technol. Manag. 15(1), 5–24 (2014)
Jacobs, R.S., Heuvelman, A., Tan, M., Peters, O.: Digital movie piracy: a perspective on downloading behavior through social cognitive theory. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28(3), 958–967 (2012)
Phau, I., Teah, M., Liang, J.: Investigating the factors influencing digital movie piracy. J. Promot. Manag. 22(5), 637–664 (2016)
Redondo, I., Charron, J.-P.: The payment dilemma in movie and music downloads: an explanation through cognitive dissonance theory. Comput. Hum. Behav. 29(5), 2037–2046 (2013)
Fleming, P., Watson, S.J., Patouris, E., Bartholomew, K.J., Zizzo, D.J.: Why do people file share unlawfully? A systematic review, meta-analysis and panel study. Comput. Hum. Behav. 72, 535–548 (2017)
Urbonavicius, S., Dikcius, V., Adomaviciute, K., Urbonavicius, I.: Movie piracy: how novelty-seeking relates to illegal downloading. EuroMed J. Bus. 14(1), 21–30 (2019)
Gupta, P.K., Venkataramani, B.: Evaluation of movie piracy using an integrated approach of interpretive structural modelling and MICMAC analysis. Int. J. Indian Cult. Bus. Manag. 11(1), 43–58 (2015)
Higgins, G.E., Fell, B.D., Wilson, A.L.: Low self-control and social learning in understanding students’ intentions to pirate movies in the United States. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 25(3), 339–357 (2007)
Malin, J., Fowers, B.J.: Adolescent self-control and music and movie piracy. Comput. Hum. Behav. 25(3), 718–722 (2009)
Lin, X., Qiu, Z., Li, J., Cheng, L.: The influencing factors of viewing network pirate film in China. In: 12th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management (ICSSSM), pp. 1–4. IEEE (2015)
Akers, R.: Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance. Routledge, New York (2017)
Bandura, A.: Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1986)
Batlle, E., Neuschmied, H., Uray, P., Ackermann, G.: Recognition and analysis of audio for copyright protection: the RAA project. J. Am. Soc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 55(12), 1084–1091 (2004)
**n Hua Daily Finance. http://www.xhfmedia.com/newsdetail.htm?id=1902140050. Accessed 14 Sept 2019
Sanfilippo, M., Yang, S., Fichman, P.: Trolling here, there, and everywhere: perceptions of trolling behaviors in context. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 68(10), 2313–2327 (2017)
Sun, H., Fichman, P.: Chinese collective trolling. Proc. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 55(1), 478–485 (2018)
Cockrill, A., Goode, M.M.: DVD pirating intentions: angels, devils, chancers and receivers. J. Consum. Behav. 11(1), 1–10 (2012)
Chiou, J.S., Cheng, H.I., Huang, C.Y.: The effects of artist adoration and perceived risk of getting caught on attitude and intention to pirate music in the United States and Taiwan. Ethics Behav. 21(3), 182–196 (2011)
Steinmetz, K.F., Tunnell, K.D.: Under the pixelated jolly roger: a study of on-line pirates. Deviant Behav. 34(1), 53–67 (2013)
Cho, H., Chung, S., Filippova, A.: Perceptions of social norms surrounding digital piracy: the effect of social projection and communication exposure on injunctive and descriptive social norms. Comput. Hum. Behav. 48, 506–515 (2015)
Siponen, M., Vance, A., Willison, R.: New insights into the problem of software piracy: the effects of neutralization, shame, and moral beliefs. Inf. Manag. 49(7–8), 334–341 (2012)
Tong, Z., Yan, F., Hao, J.: Digital copyright protection in China. Publ. Res. Q. 24(1), 48–53 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-008-9049-z
Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J., Bracken, C.C.: Content analysis in mass communication: assessment and reporting of intercoder reliability. Hum. Commun. Res. 28(4), 587–604 (2002)
Gu, J.: From divergence to convergence: institutionalization of copyright and the decline of online video piracy in China. Int. Commun. Gaz. 80(1), 60–86 (2018)
Liu, X., Zha, Y.: Copyright protection of digital movies using the coalition of technology and law in China. Chin. Stud. 07(04), 259–276 (2018)
Johnson, J.D., Meischke, H.: A comprehensive model of cancer-related information seeking applied to magazines. Hum. Commun. Res. 19(3), 343–367 (1993)
Akbulut, Y.: Exploration of the antecedents of digital piracy through a structural equation model. Comput. Educ. 78(C), 294–305 (2014)
Brown, M.E., Trevino, L.K., Harrison, D.A.: Ethical leadership: a social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 97(2), 117–134 (2005)
Kos Koklic, M., Kukar-Kinney, M., Vida, I.: Three-level mechanism of consumer digital piracy: development and cross-cultural validation. J. Bus. Ethics 134(1), 15–27 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2075-1
Jetha, K., Berente, N., King, J.L.: Digital and analog logics: an analysis of the discourse on property rights and information goods. Inf. Soc. 33(3), 119–132 (2017)
Hofstede, G.: Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (2001)
Acknowledgments
We thank Dr. Besiki Stvilia for his suggestions on this paper. The second author would like to thank China Scholarship Council (CSC) for financially supporting her visit in Florida State University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
None.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lyu, Y., **e, J., **e, B. (2020). The Attitudes of Chinese Online Users Towards Movie Piracy: A Content Analysis. In: Sundqvist, A., Berget, G., Nolin, J., Skjerdingstad, K. (eds) Sustainable Digital Communities. iConference 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12051. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43686-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43687-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)